Luca Marini<\/a> responded when asked before the Indonesian Grand Prix if he believes a podium is possible for him with Honda.<\/p>\n\u201cAs Joan [Mir] showed, but also as I showed in the past races, the bike improved a bit and we are able now to ride better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\u201cIn certain circumstances now I think it\u2019s possible to fight for the podium.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cEvery time is a good option, every time is a good opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indonesia, however, is an uncertainty for Marini because of the stark contrast it offers to Motegi.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere is a little bit of a question mark,\u201d the Honda HRC Castrol rider said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis track changes many things compared to Motegi, especially the casing of the rear tyre but also the temperature, the track layout \u2013 everything is different so we need to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter FP1 we will understand a little bit more our potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we can enjoy this weekend and try to achieve another good result like in the past races.\u201d<\/p>\n
As ever in MotoGP, qualifying will be important to be able to achieve a strong result in Indonesia, regardless of a rider\u2019s race pace or a bike\u2019s performance level.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery bike is able to fight with a good qualifying,\u201d Marini said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven Quartararo made fantastic races starting from pole position even if the potential of the package is not that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\u201cI think now, with the bike that we have, especially for the Sprint race but also for the long race, if you start in the first row it\u2019s a very easy race compared to starting in the back and recover, even if you have a good pace, because it\u2019s very difficult to overtake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, every bike is super-competitive and the qualifying lap is very important; we try to do it well every time and Joan did it very well in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marini added that the pressure on qualifying is forcing the riders to change how they approach the race weekends.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we are pushing at the very limit in the practice to stay in the top-10 because this can change your weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the moment, it\u2019s like this. If you don\u2019t have the pace but you start in the front you can achieve a very good result; if you have the best pace of the grid but you start 12th I think the race will be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luca Marini is chasing a MotoGP podium after Joan Mir\u2019s top-three finish at Motegi. Marini DNF\u2019d the Japanese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,9400,9399,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-185162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-honda-hrc","11":"tag-luca-marini","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}